“Kenny Dorham is firmly and flowingly himself. He has evolved into one of the most lyrical improvisers in Jazz, but that lyricism is also unusually incisive. There is a consistent clarity and definiteness in Kenny’s playing that makes his work tensile as well as sensitive.”

- Nat Hentoff, insert notes, Una Mas [verb tense changed]

“Dorham’s velvety tone and inventive, incisive solos make him among the most unique trumpeters and gifted melodic improvisers to emerge in the 1950s.”

- Len Lyons, Jazz Portraits” The Live & Music of the Jazz Masters

“It seems that every time you read about Kenny Dorham, someone is referring to him as ‘a greatly underrated trumpeter.’ I’ve probably been guilty of this myself. I say guilty because if all the energy expended by Jazz writers and commentators in lamenting Kenny’s lack of proper recognition , was turned toward a more positive extolling of his many virtues, perhaps he would be much further ahead in his career. Certainly, he is one of the very best trumpeters in Jazz.”

- Ira Gitler, insert notes, Whistle Stop

“His peers and knowledgeable listeners never ignored Dorham’s accomplishments. Indeed trumpet players as diverse as Randy Brecker and Byron Stripling have acknowledged their debt to him. But until some of the young musicians of the [nineteen] nineties spread the work, his work had received little general attention for a couple of decades. If the emerging generation of players will use Kenny Dorham as a model not for imitation, but to inspire the hard work of making their own artistry blossom, his spirit will brighten the future of Jazz as it illuminated the past.”

While doing a bit of research recently on tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, the thought came to mind that his frequent front-line partner, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, was an often overlooked figure in Jazz circles, then and now.

Dorham was somehow considered a “second-tiered” trumpeter when compared to the life of Dizzy, Miles, Clifford Brown and other modern Jazz trumpet luminaries.

Kenny’s name is still rarely mentioned today which is surprising given the number of high profile groups that he performed with, the huge discography he was involved with both under his own name and with other significant Jazz musicians, and the fact that he created a style or sound on the trumpet that is as instantly recognizable as Diz’s, Miles’ or Brownie’s.

Rummaging around our collection of Jazz recordings and books only served to further heighten the question of why Kenny is so often ignored because when one looks for it, there is quite a bit of information available about Dorham’s career and his music.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to gather some of these writings about Kenny into a feature as a way of remembering him or, if you will, memorializing him.

To further this effort, the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD. has even put together a video tribute to Kenny which is located at the end of this piece.

“Kenny Dorham has been scandalously undervalued in the jazz trumpet lineage. His breathy tone was not the immediate warmth of Clifford Brown, and his airy attack was less piercing than Lee Morgan, but careful listeners will hear him to be one of the more gifted trumpeters of the bebop and hard bop eras.

Dorham possessed a rare, soft and vulnerable sound that is soothing and instantly identifiable. Eschewing the typical trumpeter's showmanship and flashiness, Dorham instead relied on his economical melodic logic in constructing poetic, lyrical improvisations with meaningful beginnings, middles, and ends.

His technique is also unique: Dorham chose to attack notes with his tongue, where most of his bebop contemporaries would slur for a more continuous flow. His clearly articulated lines had a singular running quality to them that fleetly pushed ahead of the time.

At mid-tempos, Dorham distinctly articulated an exaggerated staccato swing feel, greatly contrasting his double-timed legato phrases. On ballads, Dorham would not stray far from the melody, his minimalist approach exposing the innate beauty of each melody he touched. His idiosyncratic use of grace notes, varied attacks on single notes, such as scooping underneath or bending above the pitch, and stuttering repetitions of notes were some of the personal nuances that decorated his deceptively complex improvisations.

Paradoxically, the fact that Dorham was nearly always the first-call replacement in all-star groups, which should be a testament to his talents, has led to a perception that he was a second-tier trumpeter, when nothing is farther from the truth. Dorham replaced Fats Navarro in Billy Eckstine’s band in 1946, Miles Davis in Charlie Parker’s quintet in 1949, and Clifford Brown in Art Blakey and Horace Silver’s Jazz Messengers in 1954 and again in the Max Roach group in 1956.”

“Dorham started the piano at age seven and took up the trumpet in high school. From 1945-8 he played with Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton and Mercer Ellington. He replaced Miles Davis in the Charlie Parker quintet from 1948-50, playing with Parker at the Paris jazz festival in 1949. He freelanced in New York during the early 1950s, and in 1954 was a founder-member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Dorham was a star soloist on the great 1954 album which was the blueprint for the Messengers, Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers. From 1956-8 he replaced Clifford Brown in the Max Roach quintet, and played superlatively on another classic album of the 1950s, Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker. During the late 1950s and the 1960s he led various groups of his own, composed and played music for some films, worked with Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley, toured internationally and played major festivals. Dorham recorded with Parker, Coltrane, Monk, Oliver Nelson, Tadd Dameron, J.J. Johnson and Sonny Rollins, and some of his finest playing was done on other people's albums. He died of kidney failure in 1972.

Dorham was one of the first bebop trumpeters, and had something of the fleetness of Gillespie and the sonority of Miles Davis. By the beginning of the 1950s he had absorbed his influences and found his own individual voice on trumpet. He was a brilliant player who was never glib, and could project great lyricism even at fast tempos, producing astonishingly long lines of fluid triplets. He was also a magnificent blues play­er, because his fluidity of execution was accompanied by all the tonal inflexions of the vocal blues tradition. Dorham influenced and inspired countless trumpeters all over the world, but never himself broke through to a wider audience or got all the recognition he was due, because he was overshadowed by Davis and Fats Navarro in the 1940s and Clifford Brown and others in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a fine composer, and one of his pieces, "Blue Bossa", has become part of the general jazz repertoire.”

“Kenny Dorham was one of those musicians fated to be always the bridesmaid, never the bride when it came to handing out the trumpet honors. Throughout his career, he stood in the shadow of more mercurial talents like Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown or Lee Morgan, and, for that matter, less virtuoso but more popular masters like Miles Davis and Chet Baker - Kenny couldn't win either way. The extra luster reflected from these great horn men should not dazzle us into underestimating Dorham's own considerable capabilities. He was highly adept technically, had a fine sense of swing, and deep roots in a blues sensibility. His sound was generally dark and a little astringent, and he liked to develop his melodic ideas in a lucid, carefully structured, and often understated fashion (David Rosenthal calls it 'austere') which depended more on subtle nuances of tone and rhythmic accent than on pyrotechnics.

He was the perfect example of the musician's musician, and the high regard of his peers is reflected in his credits as a sideman. He cut his teeth with the seminal bebop big bands of Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie, recorded with Fats Navarro and Bud Powell for Savoy, and took Miles Davis's place in Charlie Parker's quintet in 1948 (he is heard on some of the saxophonist's live sessions from the Royal Roost - there is a good solo on the version of 'Hot House' from 15 January, 1949 - and the Verve studio set Swedish Schnapps among others).

The distinguished roster of leaders who gave Dorham a call also included Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, J. J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Lou Donaldson, Tadd Dameron, Gil Melle, Phil Woods, Ernie Henry, Hank Mobley, Matthew Gee, Herb Geller, Benny Golson, Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, Cecil Taylor, Randy Weston, Oliver Nelson, Harold Land, Clifford Jordan, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Cedar Walton, and Barry Harris. He was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and was part of Max Roach's group for two years. He worked frequently throughout his career with baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne. The baritone was an instrument which appealed to him, and he incorporated it frequently in his own groups. Space prevents consideration of his work as a sideman here, but no understanding of Dorham's music would be complete without hearing at least some of it.

He was born McKinley Howard Dorham in Fairfield, Texas, on 30 August 1924, into a musical family. He vacillated between music and boxing through high school and as a science student at Wiley College, Texas (where he played in the Wiley Collegians band which also included pianist Wild Bill Davis and drummer Roy Porter), but finally opted for a career in music in 1945. He moved to New York (where he was initially known as Kinny) after his military service, and took advantage of the GI Bill to study composition and arranging at Gotham School of Music in 1948. A useful compilation of Dorham's scattered contributions as a sideman in the late 1940s was issued as Blues in Bebop in 1998.

He began the 1950s as a freelance, and played on Thelonious Monk's classic Genius of Modern Music for Blue Note in 1952, then made his debut as a leader with a session cut on 15 December, 1953, for Debut, the label run by Charles Mingus and Max Roach. Kenny Dorham Quintet featured Jimmy Heath on tenor and baritone saxophones, Walter Bishop on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Kenny Clarke on drums. The trumpeter came up with some very pleasing arrangements on the six tunes, including his own uptempo swinger 'An Oscar For Oscar' (the dedicatee is Oscar Goodstein, the owner of Birdland) and tunes like Monk's 'Ruby, My Dear' and Osie Johnson's 'Osmosis'. A couple of previously unreleased blues outings were added to the CD issue.

Just over a year later, Dorham replaced Clifford Brown in the band which became The Jazz Messengers, and was still a Messenger when he cut his first Blue Note date. Afro-Cuban eventually featured material from two sessions, but was initially released as a 10-inch LP with four tunes featuring the Cuban percussionist Carlos 'Potato' Valdes, recorded on 29 March, 1955. The session featured the first studio recordings of three of Dorham's best compositions, 'Afrodisia', the lovely 'Lotus Flower', and 'Minor's Holiday', named for another trumpeter, Minor Robinson (an excellent alternate take is included on the CD issue), and a Gigi Gryce chart, 'Basheer's Dream'.

The trumpeter adopts unusually punchy single note lines, a strat­egy which led the Penguin Guide to note that 'Dorham never sounded more like Dizzy Gillespie than on Afro-Cuban', an impression enhanced by the rhythmic concept. The octet featured J. J. Johnson on trombone, fellow Messenger Hank Mobley on tenor and Cecil Payne on baritone saxophone, and a rhythm section of Horace Silver on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. The remaining selections on the first 12-inch LP release, all by Dorham, came from a session on 30 January, featuring a sextet with Mobley, Payne, Silver, Blakey, and bassist Percy Heath. The CD issue now includes an additional track released as 'K.D.'s Cab Ride', but later discovered to have been given the somewhat more romantic title 'Echo of Spring' by the composer.

Dorham contributed to Tadd Dameron's classic Fontainebleaufor Prestige in March, 1956, and was back in the studio as a leader on 4 April. He had decided to set up his own group along similar lines to The Messengers, to be known as Kenny Dorham and The Jazz Prophets, with J. R. Monterose on tenor, Dick Katz on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Arthur Edgehill on drums. He cut a session under that name for Chess, with the optimistic addition of Volume 1 to the title, a gambit which proved less than prophetic, since there was no follow-up. The Prophet' is the outstanding track of the five cut that day, a surging minor key workout which follows the initial statement of the catchy theme with a delicate staccato trading of thematic material between Dorham and tenor saxophonist J. R. Monterose, then opens out into expansive solos and a return to the theme.

'Tahitian Suite', also in the minor, shifts from the 6/8 of the theme to standard 4/4 for the solos, and is the first of several tunes inspired by distant places. Dorham adopted a mute on 'Blues Elegante' and 'Don't Explain', but succeeded in not sounding like Miles in the process, while 'DX', is an up-tempo workout.

Monterose, an interesting but relatively neglected saxophonist from Detroit who played with Charles Mingus on the classic Pith­ecanthropus Erectus (although it was not a happy experience for him), is in fine form on this session, apart from an intermittently squeaking reed, notably on 'Tahitian Suite'. His subsequent debut as leader for Blue Note, J. R. Monterose, recorded on 21 October, 1956, is worth seeking out.

A version of the Jazz Prophets band is featured on Dorham's 'Round About Midnight at The Cafe Bohemia, with Bobby Timmons replacing Katz on piano, and Kenny Burrell added on guitar. Recorded for Blue Note over a single long night on 31 May, 1956, it captures the band in fine fettle, while underlining the quality of his writing in two additions to his exotic travelogue, 'Monaco* and 'Mexico City', as well as the bop fundamentalism of 'The Prophet', 'Riffin" and 'K.D.'s Blues'. His original and engaging melodies and marked structural awareness have won him a fair amount of critical praise as a composer, but with the exception of the ubiquitous 'Blue Bossa', that admiration has not really been reflected in the take-up of his tunes by other players (Don Sickler's Music of Kenny Dorham on the Uptown label in 1983 was an obvious exception).

Dorham joined Max Roach's band as a replacement for Clifford Brown following the trumpeter's tragic death in June, 1956, and remained with the drummer for two years, avoiding the jinx which Roach feared afflicted his trumpet players in that era (both Brown and Booker Little suffered premature deaths). He cut several albums with Roach during that association, and also continued to record as a leader.

Jazz Contrasts, made for Riverside on 21 May, 1957, is one of his strongest statements on record. The contributions of harpist Betty Glamman on three carefully arranged ballads will not suit all tastes, although the instrument is effectively employed to complement the rhythm section of Hank Jones on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass (Glamman was a member of his big band), and Max Roach on drums, with Sonny Rollins as the second horn. Dorham is a fine ballad player in any setting, and shines on Gigi Gryce's arrangements of 'My Old Flame' and Clifford Brown's 'Larue', a heartfelt tribute to the late trumpeter, as well as his own arrangement of 'But Beautiful'.

Both Dorham and Rollins are in fiery mood on the up-tempo material. Dorham negotiates the skittering eighth notes and flying triplets of a manic 'I'll Remember April' and his own equally energized 'La Villa' (a tune first recorded on Afro-Cuban) with real poise and command. His lines are clean, sharply articulated and accurately pitched even at these tempos, but the speed of execution does not deflect his attention from the unfolding shape of his solo. Their version of 'Falling In Love With Love' is taken at a more relaxed clip, and features a lovely melodic solo from Hank Jones, long the most unsung of the famous trio of Detroit siblings completed by his brothers Thad and Elvin. Like Tommy Flanagan, another Detroit native, Jones was equally at home in swing or bop settings, but both these great pianists only really made their mark as leaders later in their careers.

Dorham's next album for Riverside, cut on 13 November and 2 December, 1957, took a different tack. 2 Horns, 2 Rhythm dispensed with piano for a date which featured the ill-fated alto saxophonist Ernie Henry, with either Eddie Mathias (in the earlier session) or Wilbur Ware on bass, and G. T. Hogan on drums. Dorham had worked with Henry before, including the saxophonist's 1956 debut for Riverside, Presenting Ernie Henry, but this date was to be the saxophonist's last before his premature death on 29 December, 1957. He made only two other albums as a leader, Seven Standards and A Blues and the posthumously issued Last Chorus, both of which date from September, 1957. Henry also participated in the mammoth sessions for Monk's Brilliant Corners, although he often seemed out of his depth in that demanding music. His own records, and his contribution here, provide better evidence of his unfulfilled potential.

Dorham made good use of the spare instrumental textures. A piano less quartet was not a new innovation (Gerry Mulligan was enjoying great success with that format, and Dorham had been partly responsible for its adoption in Max Roach's group), but it was still fairly unusual, and posed special challenges to players used to a reassuring carpet of chords running beneath their work. The horn players revel in the extra space, with the trumpeter in excellent creative shape on five standards and three original compositions, including another 'Lotus Blossom' and an evocation of classical counterpoint in 'Jazz-Classic'. The standards included a very solemn version of Gershwin's 'Soon', with minimal piano interjections by Dorham, and an exhumation of 'Is It True What They Say About Dixie?', a selection which suggests some of Sonny Rollins's predilection for unlikely vehicles may have rubbed off on the trumpeter.

Although Dorham had doubled as a blues vocalist with Dizzy Gillespie's band, and claimed that he saw his singing as an integral aspect of his overall musical identity, he made only one record featuring his voice, and that at a time when Chet Baker was racking up big sales with his own combined efforts. His vocals are agreeable enough, but the lack of any sustained follow up makes the album, This Is The Moment, something of a curiosity in his output. It was recorded in July and August, 1958, for Riverside, and marked the recording debut of pianist Cedar Walton. …

Dorham taught at the jazz school organized by pianist John Lewis at Lenox, Massachusetts in 1958 and 1959. He contributed characteristically well focused trumpet playing to a famous but ultimately disappointing session featuring John Coltrane and pia­nist Cecil Taylor in October, 1958, although the disappointment stems largely from the very high expectations such a combination generates. It was originally Taylor's date, and appeared as Stereo Drive on United Artists, but was later reissued as Coltrane Time on Blue Note. Dorham's 'Shifting Down' and bassist Chuck Israels' 'Double Clutching' are more interesting than the two standards, neither of which quite catches fire.

His final Riverside date, Blue Spring, was recorded on 20 January and 18 February, 1959, and combined four of his own compositions on that theme ('Blue Spring', 'Poetic Spring', 'Spring Is Here', and 'Spring Cannon') with two tunes by Richard Rodgers, 'It Might As Well Be Spring' and 'Passion Spring'. In a reversal of the sparse textures he had chosen for his previous album, Dorham assembled a septet, with Cannonball Adderley on alto saxophone alongside Cecil Payne on baritone and the more unusual timbre of David Amram's French horn, and a rhythm section of Cedar Walton on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and either Jimmy Cobb or Philly Joe Jones on drums. Dorham's solos are characteristically purposeful and inventive, while his deftly handled arrangements make expressive use of the contrasting sonority of the alto with the darker shadings of baritone and horn in another strong, thoughtful album.

Dorham's style was well set by the end of the decade, and he had developed a more refined approach to tone and sonority. He was soon recording again, this time for Prestige's New Jazz imprint. Quiet Kenny, recorded on 13 November, 1959, with a rhythm trio of Tommy Flanagan on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and drummer Art Taylor, is one of his most consistently achieved records. Despite the title, this is not primarily a ballad album, although it contains beautiful interpretations of 'My Ideal' and 'Old Folks', as well as another 'Lotus Blossom'. Rather, the title implies a measured deliberation. It was the first time he had recorded without another horn, and while he relished the freedom of that context, his statements are made sotto voce, and impress with their discipline, authority and sheer musicality rather than any more brash means of point-scoring. Flanagan is a perfect foil, and the whole disc is a polished gem.

Flanagan was present again on 10 January, 1960, with Charles Davis on baritone saxophone, Butch Warren on bass and Buddy Enlow on drums. The results have been issued under contrasting titles as Kenny Dorham Memorial Album on Zanadu and The Arrival of Kenny Dorham on Fresh Sounds. It included Tm An Old Cowhand', a tune forever associated with Sonny Rollins, and an elegant 'Stella By Starlight'. Davis's baritone was also promi­nently featured on a session on 11 February, 1960, released as Jazz Contemporary on the Time label, which included versions of 'Monk's Mood' and Dave Brubeck's ‘ln Your Own Sweet Way', as well as Dorham's 'Horn Salute'. Showboat, recorded for Time on 9 December, 1960, featured a quintet with Jimmy Heath on tenor saxophone and pianist Kenny Drew, and was devoted entirely to the music of Oscar Hammerstein. In between, he had taken part in the alternative Newport Rebels festival arranged by Charles Mingus and Max Roach as a protest against the commercialization of the Newport Jazz Festival, which ended in chaos that year.

Dorham rejoined the Blue Note stable, and cut Whistle Stop on 15 January, 1961. Although it would have been difficult to guess at the time, and impossible to deduce from the powerful trumpet playing and strong compositions on this excellent and still rather undervalued album, Dorham's career was now in its final phase. He would do little of any real significance after 1964, and some of the music which he did make in this three year period shows occasional signs of strain. Conversely, much of it is amongst the strongest work of his career, both on his own albums and as a sideman with two of the newer generation, saxophonist Joe Henderson and pianist Andrew Hill.

Whistle Stop reunited the trumpeter with an old front line partner, saxophonist Hank Mobley, as well as his favored rhythm twins, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Pianist Kenny Drew completed the quintet which laid down one of his most overtly straight-ahead sessions, led by the energized title track, and dipping into the familiar well-springs of the blues on 'Philly Twist' and funk on 'Buffalo', as well as more recent modal directions in 'Sunset'. 'Sunrise In Mexico' and 'Windmill' aimed at colorful musical evocations of their subjects, and swung furiously into the bargain. The album closed with 'Dorham's Epitaph', a brief melancholy theme which, according to Ira Gitler's sleeve note, the trumpeter had apparently worked up into a large scale orchestral piece, which to my knowledge has never been performed.

The inspiration behind Matador, made for Richard Bock's Pacific Jazz, was a tour of South America with Monte Kay's First American Jazz Festival in June, 1961. His response to Brazil and its music was swift and immediate. He was drawn to its emotional power (he described the tour as 'an exciting, wild, new, unforgettable experience' and the music as shattering), but also to its structural variety and time signatures. The album, and in particular his own 'El Matador', is a vivid response to the experience, and includes his arrangement of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos's 'Prelude'.

Matador was later combined on CD with his other Pacific Jazz release, the live set Inta Somethin,’ recorded at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in November, 1961, which included the title track of Dorham's next Blue Note disc, 'Una Mas'. Matador was recorded in New York on 15 April, 1962, and also featured an intense version of Jackie McLean's 'Melanie'. The saxophonist played alto on both sessions, with two entirely different rhythm sections, and has remained a prominent booster of the trumpeter's reputation. Dorham also recorded several sessions as a sideman in 1961, two of which were later reissued by Black Lion under his name as West 42nd Street and Osmosis, although they were really led by saxophonist Rocky Boyd and drummer Dave Bailey respectively.

His most significant musical relationship of the period was the one which developed with the up and coming young saxophonist Joe Henderson, newly signed to Blue Note in 1963. It spanned six albums in 1963-64, all for Blue Note: Dorham's Una Mas and Trompeta Toccata, Henderson's Page One (which featured the first recording of 'Blue Bossa'), Our Thing and In ‘n Out, and Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, a key record of the era. Both Henderson and Hill will be dealt with in the next book in this sequence, and space does not permit a detailed consideration of these albums here, but they are essential to a full picture of the trumpeter's music in the last decade of his career. He was clearly well aware of the new currents flowing through jazz, and adapts comfortably within the more progressive frameworks generated by musicians like Hill and Eric Dolphy on Point of Departure, and McCoy Tyner, Pete LaRoca and Elvin Jones on the Henderson albums.

The session for Una Mas on 1 April, 1963 was Joe Henderson's first ever record date. Dorham had taken the saxophonist under his wing, and Henderson remained a staunch admirer when I spoke to him about his big band album in 1996, a project which had its roots in a rehearsal band he co-led with Dorham three decades earlier. Henderson acknowledged the trumpeter's role in his own development, placing him alongside Horace Silver and Miles Davis in that regard, and added that'Kenny was one of the most important creators around, and yet you hardly ever hear his name anymore'. The quintet also featured Herbie Hancock on piano, Butch Warren on bass, and drummer Tony Williams, in a solid session which contained three original tunes by Dorham, the Brazilian influenced 'Una Mas' and 'Sao Paulo' and the more boppish 'Straight Ahead', as well as a tender evocation of Lerner-Loewe's 'If Ever I Would Leave You'.

Short Story and Scandia Skies, made in Copenhagen for Steeple­chase in December, 1963, are less impressive, although the label gathered an interesting group of musicians for the dates, including the mercurial Catalan pianist Tete Montoliu and bassist Niels-Henning 0rsted Pedersen, as well as a second trumpet or flugelhorn (Allan Botschinsky on Short Story, Rolf Ericson on Scandia Skies) rather than saxophone. Dorham's playing often sounds routine, both in technical terms and degree of emotional commitment.

His final date for Blue Note, Trompeta Toccata, was made nine months later, on 4 September, 1964, with Henderson on tenor, Tommy Flanagan on piano, Richard Davis on bass, and Albert 'Tootie' Heath on drums. The long title track moves away from standard song form entirely, using a rubato introduction followed by a 20-bar structure in flowing 6/8 time, which the players treat freely in terms of phrase lengths. The music is also distant from hard bop, but reflects Dorham's interest in both classical and Latin music, as well as something of the new harmonic freedoms current in the jazz of the time, led by John Coltrane, whose approach is echoed in Henderson's solo. Both 'Night Watch' and 'The Fox' are framed in more conventional jazz structures, while Henderson supplied his infectious Latin groove tune 'Mamacita'. The album has some fine moments, but it is arguably the least compelling of his records for the label.

It is ironic that Leonard Feather's sleeve note concludes with Dorham saying that there is 'more and more I feel I can do. And these days, it strikes me that the sky's the limit.’ Despite that confident assertion, Trompeta Toccata was his last significant outing as a leader. Although he was only forty, the long anticipated major breakthrough had not arrived, and jazz fashions were set to change again as the decade progressed, leaving him swimming against the tide.

He co-led a rehearsal big band with Joe Henderson for a year or so from mid-1966, but his later work was mainly as a sideman, including dates with Cedar Walton and Detroit pianist Barry Harris for Prestige, and an intriguing session led by Cecil Payne in Decem­ber, 1968, issued as Zodiac: The Music of Cecil Payne on Strata East. Dorham's contributions to an excellent date dispel any notion that he was even remotely a spent force, and the prompting of a band which included pianist Wynton Kelly alongside Wilbur Ware on bass and Tootie Heath on drums drive the trumpeter to the most impressive playing on disc of his later years.

Dorham also did some reviewing for Down Beat, and, as he told Art Taylor in 1971, planned to concentrate his energies on education rather than performing. He died from kidney disease on 5 December, 1972, in New York. Art Blakey described him as the uncrowned king of modern jazz, and if not quite that, his best work is conclusive evidence of his right to be regarded as one of the finest players and composers of his era.”

Monty Alexander Trio at Marciac 2011

Joe Morello and Phil Woods- "Summertime"

Gerry Mulligan CJB - "Bweebida Bobbida"

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Sonny Clark's "Conception"

“Sonny Clark approached music with joyous abandon. … Note perfect, rhythmically bouncy and always ready with a quirky idea, he was the ideal group-player ….

Appearing as it did in the shadow of Cool Struttin’ [… an immaculately tasteful Jazz album and one of the key documents of hard bop] the March 1959 My Conception sessions never gained the reputation of its wonderful predecessor. This is unfortunate, for here again Clark showcases a wonderful set of originals The result is an immaculately tasteful and sophisticated modern Jazz record.. .”

Remember, it’s all in a point-of-view with regard to how opinions are formed.

Some in the group seriously objected to Gigi’s Gryce’s inclusion in the obscure composer listing arguing that Gigi was better known as a composer than a player while others strongly agreed that the compositional body of work that Hank Mobley, Clifford Brown and even John Coltrane had put together during their careers was overshadowed by the acclaim they received as instrumentalists.

But when pianist Sonny Clark’s name was mentioned, it was met by a universal acknowledgement that his writing was deserving of much wider recognition and respect.

One person likened Sonny’s obscurity as a composer to that of fellow pianist Elmo Hope while also remarking that “… the consistency and the of quality of his writing puts him right up there with Horace Silver” [the legendary small group leader and pianist turned out such iconic Jazz tunes as The Preacher, Doodlin’ and Senor Blues].

Following this get-together, I went searching through my collection of Sonny Clark recordings and pleasantly rediscovered a number of his terrific tunes, all of which was made even more amazing when one considers that he was a victim of the heroin scourge that gripped the Jazz world from around 1945-1965 and died in 1963 at the age of 32.

Sonny’s all-too-brief career is wonderfully encapsulated and memorialized in Michael Cuscuna’s insert notes to Sonny’s Blue Note recording – My Conception[7243 5 22674 2 2]. We wrote to Michael and he graciously granted his permission to reproduce these notes on JazzProfiles.

“SONNY CLARK is not a name that appears with any frequency in documents of jazz history. He has never been proclaimed a major original pianist. Yet Clark's major influence seems to have been his own creativity. His style was full and rich, yet carried a bright, irresistible swing that swept away the musician and listener alike. He was, to these ears, the realization of the perfect post-bop pianist. By all accounts, the musicians that worked with him regarded him as a source of joy and inspiration. And any listener who stops and really hears his work will be hooked forever.

After spending the first 20 years of his life in and around Pittsburgh mastering the piano and playing vibes and bass as well, Clark ventured out to the West Coast in 1951 with his older brother. He worked the Los Angeles area with Wardell Gray, Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon, Shelly Manne and a score of others. In 1953, Oscar Pettiford came to Los Angeles, formed a band that included Clark and went up to San Francisco. There Sonny met Buddy DeFranco who was leading a quartet with Art Blakey and Kenny Drew. Blakey and Drew left, and Sonny was asked to join. During the next two and a half years, Clark appeared on three DeFranco recordings and toured Europe, the American Midwest and Hawaii with the clarinetist.

In January of 1956, Clark settled into a more stationary life, joining Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars. During that year, he recorded in a quartet setting under the leadership of Serge Chaloff with Philly Joe Jones on drums (EMI Capitol) and with drummer Lawrence Marable's quartet which featured tenor saxophonist James Clay (Jazz West). On that album Sonny was not only featured as a player, but also contributed three compositions.

In February 1957, he joined Dinah Washington in order to work his way back East. Referring to West Coast music, he said, "I did have sort of a hard time trying to be comfortable in my playing, the fellows on the West Coast have a different sort of feeling, a different approach to jazz. They swing in their own way....The Eastern musicians play with so much fire.” On another occasion, he was quoted as saying, "Jazz is jazz wherever it's played. The whole thing has to do with the individual and his conception toward jazz. The thing is that my playing is different from the way most of the fellows out West play. I'd rather work in the East because what is played here is closer to the traditional meaning of jazz. They're getting away from the tradition out West — combining jazz with classical music and playing chamber music-type jazz. What they play is really very good, but it's just not the way I want to play. That's why I came back East." And come back he did in April 1957 at the end of the Dinah Washington tour.

He worked at Birdland under the leadership of J.R. Monterose and Stan Getz and gigged briefly with Anita O'Day and Charles Mingus. In early June, he recorded with Sonny Rollins (Riverside). On June 23, he recorded as a sideman for Blue Note on a Hank Mobley session. A month later, he made his first album as a leader for Blue Note. Thus began a long and fruitful association wherein Clark appeared regularly on Blue Note dates with a variety of artists.

In fact, between June 1957 and March 1959, he was in the studio eight times as a leader and another 15 times as a sideman with Mobley, John Jenkins, Curtis Fuller, Johnny Griffin, Clifford Jordan, Lou Donaldson, Lee Morgan, Louis Smith, Tina Brooks, Bennie Green and Jackie McLean.

Then for some strange reason, Sonny was totally absent from Blue Note for the next two and a half years. In 1960 he recorded a trio album and appeared on albums by Bennie Green and Stanley Turrentine, all for Time Records and all very much Blue Note in style and personnel. That two and a half years of relative inactivity is usually credited to his bouts with drug addiction.

In October 1961, he reentered the Blue Note fold on a Jackie McLean date and during the next 12 months appeared on 13 sessions under the leadership of McLean, Don Wilkerson, Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine and Grant Green as well as making his last album as a leader, Leapin' And Lopin', in November 1961. After his final session in October 1962 (Stanley Turrentine's Jubilee Shout), Clark suffered a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in January 1963. He played two nights at a New York club called Junior's and, in the early morning hours, died of an overdose. To preserve the club's image and liquor license, his body was moved to a private apartment before the police were called in. Thus, a short ten years after his first record dates with Teddy Charles and Buddy DeFranco, his career and his life came to an end with the most tragic cliché in the jazz life.

It is through recorded documents such as this one that Sonny Clark continues to live and enrich our lives. This album, made on March 29, 1959, closed the first of Clark's two tenures at Blue Note.

What is most unique and most delightful is the presence of Art Blakey on drums. It is surprising that these two Blue Note regulars only recorded together three times — on this date and on still unissued Tina Brooks and Grant Green sessions. [Note: These sessions have since been released by Blue Note as Tina Brooks Minor Move and Grant Green Nigeria.] The great Blakey is typically superb here in his drive, pacing and taste. Listen to how he literally conducts the flow and dynamics of the music from the drum stool. His shadings and his power pace and inspire each soloist perfectly. And when given the opportunity to trade fours with the horns, as on "Junka" and "Some Clark Bars” he positively erupts.

With the exception of Sonny's first Blue Note album and a trio session of standards issued on 45 singles, bassist Paul Chambers was present on every date that the pianist led at Blue Note. And they were, of course, brought together on many sessions by other Blue Note artists. Clark once said, ‘I met Paul in Detroit in 1954. He was very young and nobody outside the city knew much about him, but I dug him right then. He's very consistent and has superior conception, choice of notes and ability to construct lines. He plays with intelligence and he always keeps it interesting.’ Aside from his typically superb support, Chambers gets off an effective and to-the-point arco solo on "Junka.”

Donald Byrd appeared on Clark's second album Sonny's Crib in October 1957. Two months later, both men contributed admirably to Lou Donaldson's Lou Takes Off. They were reunited in January 1959 on a Jackie McLean date that produced half of the Jackie's Bag album. That reunion undoubtedly led to Byrd’s presence on this session.

Encounters between the pianist and Hank Mobley were all too rare. Clark made his Blue Note debut, as mentioned earlier, on one of Mobley’s sextet albums (BLP 1568) on June 23, 1957. Mobley then participated in Sonny's first album Dial S For Sonny a month later. Clark appeared a month later on a still unissued Mobley album. They did not record together again until this album. Clark once said, ‘I never heard Hank Mobley in person until I came to New York but I listened to his records with the Jazz Messengers and dug him very much. [He] plays in my style and I was very happy working with [him] and very satisfied with the results.’

That is certainly an understatement. If "post-bop" ever spawned two underappreciated figures who were suited to each other's playing, it was Clark and Mobley. Both have a bright, propelling and very individual sense of swing. And both can burn hard with surprising lightness and grace. In the general format of hard bop that can mask the less inventive player, Clark and Mobley always gave their all with subtle, self-assured brilliance. Check out Mobley's astonishing solos on "Junka" and "Royal Flush" and his beautiful reading of the theme of "My Conception." They made quite a team!

"Some Clark Bars" is the only tune on this album that pops up nowhere else in Sonny Clark's discography. "Minor Meeting," the oldest composition, first appears on the Lawrence Marable-James Clay album of 1956, then on a December 1957 Blue Note session (that was issued in Japan on the album Quintets in 1977) and finally on the pianist's trio date for Time Records. "Royal Flush," from the January 1958 session that produced the Cool Struttin' album, was also issued in 1977 on the Quintets album. The version heard here eliminates the introduction used on the earlier date. "Junka," "Blues Blue" and "My Conception" were all given trio treatments on the aforementioned Time album from 1960.

Despite an occasional rough edge in the arrangements or a minor trumpet fluff, this newly unearthed album is a welcome and valuable edition to the legacy of Sonny Clark. Perhaps through such releases the magnitude of Sonny Clark's brilliance will be recognized by the world audience where it has only been truly appreciated by the musicians themselves and the Japanese jazz audience. Sonny Clark's music will long endure.

—MICHAEL CUSCUNA, 1980”

With the help of the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facilities at StudioCerra, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles put together the following video tribute to Sonny which features the second version of his Royal Flush from the My Conception album. [Click the “X” to drop the ads from the video should they appear.]

Joining Sonny are Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass and the irrepressible Art Blakey on drums.

Lessons in Jazz: Movement and Momentum in Jazz Drumming

As you watch this demonstration video, notice how little movement there is as Evan Hughes works his way around the drums replicating Philly Joe Jones' four bar solo exchanges with the horns on "No Room For Squares." Notice, too, how the patterns of the syncopation he incorporates into his solos keeps the momentum of the piece moving forward, i.e., swinging. Jazz drumming is about making music. It is not about showing off technique. Close your eyes and listen to the complexity of the drum solos; then open them and see how this complexity comes from simple forms and economy of movement.

www.jazzleadsheets.com

Lessons in Jazz

How To Listen To What's Happening In The Music - John Swana - "Philly Jazz"

This piece was originally written for a friend to help him follow along with what was happening in the music.

The tune is Philly Jazz. It was written by trumpeter John Swana who, as you would imagine, hails from Philadelphia, and it appears on his On Target Criss Cross CD [1241]. Joining with him on the album are Dutch guitarist Jesse van Ruller, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Eric Harland.

After reading a brief introduction about how the tuneis structured, just follow the timings listed under each musician’s name under the video, open your ears and you’ll hear it all fall into place. You can always pause or re-set the video if you lose your place or wish to hear something again.

Philly Jazz is a typical 32-bar tune that is formed around four [4], eight [8]-bar sections.

This song structure is often referred to as “A-A-B-A.”

This first “A” = 8 bars or measures of the theme or melody [0-7 seconds of the video]

The second “A” = 8 bars or measures of the theme or melody repeated [8-14 seconds].

“B” = 8 bars or measures of an alternative melody sometimes called the release or the bridge [15-20 seconds]

The third “A” = 8 bars of the theme or melody restated [21-27 seconds].

Philly Jazz’s entire 32-bar A-A-B-A configuration is thus heard in the first 27 seconds of the video.

The melody and the related chords for the A-A-B-A song structure then become the basis upon which subsequent improvisations are developed; in this case by Swana, then by van Ruller and lastly by Harland: first in conjunction with Swana and van Ruller and then he solos alone. Patitucci does not solo on Philly Jazz.

To put it another way, the musicians repeat the 32 bar A-A-B-A sequence, each time making up and super-imposing new melodies on the tune’s chord progressions.

Every time a musician completes a 32-bar improvisation, this is referred to as a “chorus.”

Following these solos, the tune’s A-A-B-A pattern is repeated at 5:39 [A], 5:45 [A], 5:51 [B] and 5:58 [A], thus closing the track.

We thought it might be fun to post a listing of the timings for the tune and the improvised choruses to help you better hear what’s going in the music.

To make things a little less confusing, the first two “A’s” or 16 bars of each chorus have been combined.

So John Swana’s first chorus’ A/A = 28-40 seconds, its B = 41-46 and its last 8 = 47-54 seconds.

At this point, you may wish to “Play” the YouTube and follow along with the timings noted below it. Don’t be concerned about scrolling below the video’s images while you are checking the track timings as you can always go back and watch it again later once your ear is trained!

Lessons in Jazz

Bill Evans - On Developing His Own Voice

Jazz Master Class No. 3 - "Explorations"

This Jazz Master Class feature is new to the blog and may be a recurring one. Please let me know your thoughts about it by dropping me a note at scerra@roadrunner.com. Thanks.

“At the core of [Bill] Evans’s thought was the abandonment of the root to the bass. He commented: “If I am going to be sitting there playing roots, fifths, and full voicings, the bass is relegated to a time machine. He was not the first. to adopt this strategy. As far back as the mid-forties Ahmad Jamal had experimented in this way, and through the fifties Erroll Garner, Red Garland, and others took individual plunges into this uncharted rootless territory.

Evans's achievement lay in consolidation, in the creation of a self-sufficient left-hand language—a "voicing vernacular" peculiarly his own—based on the logical progression of one chord to the next while involving the minimum movement of the hand. This resulted in a continuity of sound in the middle register (still implied even when momentarily broken) that opened up areas for invention not only above but below it. The pianist's left hand spent much of its time around middle C, a good clean area of the piano where harmonic clusters are acoustically clearest. Thus was paved the way for the bass player's contrapuntal independence, an opportunity seized by Scott LaFaro.

As exhibited freely on Explorations, Evans's very personal "locked-hands" technique had now attained a fully formed order. Exploratory right-hand lines were shadowed by left-hand harmonies suspended from and carried by the singing, leading voice, the choice and tone of each note consummately judged. The whole moved as a loping unit, a unified concept in which the harmonic cushion was harnessed to the rhythmic contour of the top line. "Sweet and Lovely" offers a superb example, the chordal solo adding a harmonic zest, twice removed, to the background sequence.

Evans could sustain entire choruses in this way with apparent ease, and the phenomenon was his most striking contribution to the language of piano jazz. But it was an element of style—the personal aspect of playing that he was at pains to avoid teaching at Lenox, for fear of encouraging the mimicry of an idiom rather than the emergence of that idiom from the student's own creative spirit. Individuality of style, Evans believed, must be arrived at through the application of fundamental principles, as he himself had done ever since trying to become a jazz musician. Precisely by working at the essence of his material had he arrived at a stylistic dialect through which to express it.” [Peter Pettinger, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, pp. 105-106]

Lessons in Jazz

This Jazz Master Class feature is new to the blog and may be a recurring one. Please let me know your thoughts about it by dropping me a note at scerra@roadrunner.com. Thanks.

“It all goes from imitation to assimilation to innovation. You move from the imitation stage to the assimilation stage when you take little bits of things from different people and weld them into an identifiable style—creating your own style. Once you've created your own sound and you have a good sense of the history of the music, then you think of where the music hasn't gone and where it can go— and that's innovation.”

—Walter Bishop Jr.

“Many beginners select as their exclusive idol one major figure in jazz. They copy that idol's precise vocabulary, vocabulary usage, and tune treatment, striving to improvise in the idol's precise style. Progress toward such a goal is necessarily gradual; at times, it is barely evident to the aspiring performer. In many cases, it is through encounters with veterans that they notice signs of significant advancement. Bobby Rogovin remembers his astonishment and pride the day a friend of trumpeter Donald Byrd burst into Rogovin's practice studio and called out Byrd's name, having mistaken Rogovin's performance for that of his mentor. A saxophonist once received unexpected praise when musicians, having heard his improvisations filter through the walls of a neighboring apartment, inquired about the title of the Charlie Parker recording they thought they had just overheard. One anecdote that epitomizes a student's awareness of his own success concerns a young artist—a skilled "copier"—who once approached his idol on the bandstand during the latter's uninspired performance and declared with irony, "Man, you ain't you. I'm you."1

Although encouraging students initially to follow a particular musical master and acknowledging the discipline required of faithful understudies, seasoned improvisers ultimately view such achievements as limited. Curtis Fuller feels that it is "great for a musician to walk in the shoes of the fisherman" because imitation is a great compliment, but, he cautions, "I wouldn't want to lose my personality or shut down my development that way." Otherwise, he says, "I wouldn't have enhanced what's been done before. I would rather be an extension than a retention."

Direct counsel reinforces this view within the jazz community. It helped to be in an environment with "Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Oscar Pettiford, and others who were so creative and like-minded," Max Roach admits. "We had all been instructed that to make an imprint of your own, you had to discover yourself. We fed off of each other, but encouraged each other to do

things that were individual." Everyone studied "the classics, like Bud studied Art Tatum," but they were aware of the "danger of concentrating so much on someone else's style that it was becoming predominant" in their own playing.

Some view too close an imitation of a master as an ethical issue. Arthur Rhames stopped trying to duplicate "exactly what other artists played" because he realized that "they were all playing out of their experiences, their lives— the things that happened to them." Even though he could "relate in a general way to most of it," he decided that jazz performance is "too personal" to try to duplicate exactly what other artists "were saying." There was, moreover, the spectre of imitators deliberately or inadvertently taking credit for musical ideas not original with them, or exhausting the professional jobs their mentors might otherwise have acquired. "He's living on Eddie Jefferson," George Johnson Jr. heard people say of him after he had absorbed his mentor's style. This did not really "hurt" Johnson's feelings at the time, because he was glad that others could relate him to "somebody." At the same time, he knew that he could not keep singing Jefferson's material because people would conclude that he was merely a "mimic."

Ultimately, Max Roach recalls, it was only after aspiring players had devoted years to developing their "own musical personality" that experts began "to look at you, to single you out and select you for their bands." Lester Young and others in Roach's early circle advised artists with cleverly rhymed aphorisms like "You can't join the throng 'til you write your own song."

One of the ways in which learners modify an initial mentor's influence is by studying the styles of other artists, a practice that is a natural outgrowth of their growing appreciation for the larger tradition of jazz. Barry Harris and his peers each had a particular idol, but as they grew they began "to see out a little bit." Suddenly, they stopped "idolizing" and listened "to all the giants." They realized that their tradition was "bigger than Bird, bigger than Bud Powell, much bigger than any of them." Even the greatest artists "hadn't done it all." Some youngsters, not intent upon exclusive apprenticeships, adopt this perspective from the start, absorbing features from different mentors through saturated listening, aural analysis, and transcription.” Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, [University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 120-121; Emphasis mine]

Lessons in Jazz

"Jazz can't be taught, but it can be learned." - Paul Desmond, alto saxophonist

This Jazz Master Class feature is new to the blog and may be a recurring one. Please let me know your thoughts about it by dropping me a note at scerra@roadrunner.com. Thanks.

“As learners endeavor to internalize the language of jazz, matters of physical constitution, relative mastery over instruments, and hearing acuity begin to dictate choices of material. Young pianists are literally able to grasp only those voicings of a mentor that lie within reach on the keyboard, just as young trumpeters are restricted to those patterns of an idol that require only moderate flexibility and strength to execute. When John McNeil discovered that he "didn't have the technique to copy Miles Davis's performance on E.S.P." he pursued an alternative course, "copping a lot from guys like Nat Adderley who were easier to hear—the stuff he played based on a blues scale especially. Also Chet Baker, when he wasn't moving fast, since he played real simple."

Another youngster, who yearned to improvise like John Coltrane, described months of concentrated study before he could perform "just a few phrases" from a Coltrane solo. At the peak of his frustration, the student was calmed by a dream in which Coltrane appeared to him and offered gentle encouragement: "You're doing fine; just keep it up." The student adds that Coltrane "made the phrases sound so easy on the record." It was not until he tried to learn them that he realized "how difficult they were to play, let alone to have thought up in the first place." Naivete occasionally proves to be an asset in negotiating the gulf between student and master. No one had explained to Gary Bartz how difficult Charlie Parker solos were, so he simply copied them along with those of lesser masters.

Faced with an idol's inaccessible vocabulary patterns, learners may adopt various tacks, for example, transposing the patterns into keys less difficult for them to perform. In Miles Davis's case, he played Dizzy Gillespie's figures in the middle and lower register of the trumpet because initially he could not perform or "hear music"—that is, imagine it precisely—in the trumpet's highest register as could Gillespie. Grappling with these limitations drives home to youngsters that they must gain such physical control over their instruments that their musical knowledge literally lies beneath their fingertips. As J. J. Johnson pointedly advised David Baker in his youth, "Any idea that you can't get out the other end of your horn is of absolutely no value in this music."

The most fundamental use of jazz vocabulary, then, requires the ability to perform patterns in time and at various tempos. This in turn requires learners to cultivate various technical performance skills tied to physical strength and agility. After George Duvivier trained himself to use two and three fingers for playing bass in his "solo work," his increased flexibility to reach across wide intervals on the same string and adjacent strings enabled him "to play ridiculous tempos without getting tired" and to play "groups of notes you can't possibly play with one [finger] because you can't move the finger back [to the next position] in time."

[Guitarist] Emily Remler recalls going "through just such a frustration. I'd go to a session, not be able to express myself on guitar, and cry afterwards—I was so miserable. My technique was lousy, and my time was bad. My time was bad basically because I couldn't get to the phrases in time." Remler's frustration led to an intensive practicing binge known among musicians as woodshedding. She withdrew temporarily from the jazz community and subjected herself to a musical discipline that necessarily carried over into other aspects of her lifestyle. "I played and practiced the guitar constantly, five hours a day. At one point, I went down to the Jersey shore and locked myself in a room for a month. I lost twenty pounds, stopped smoking, and became a serious guitar player. It took a lot of muscle building to reach the point where I got a really strong and full sound on the guitar. I practiced my tail off trying to play octaves and different things to build up my muscles." After months of practice, Remler began to overcome her problems. Eventually, she developed a "reservoir of technique" that she was able to "tap" for many years.” Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, [University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 114-115]

Jazz: America's Classical Music

Grover Sales

Jazz and African Rhythms – Grover Sales

"The rhythm of jazz sets it apart from other music, since rhythm has always been the most potent and body-based in the entire spectrum of sound. Gunther Schuller in his Early Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) claims that African rhythm is, by far, the most complicated form of music that exists. Only in the last half of this century, and only with the aid of sophisticated electronic devices, has the non-African mind been able to measure and comprehend the complexity of African rhythm. We have learned that master African drummers can sense and create differences of 1/12 second while engaged in ensemble playing that produces seven to eleven different musical lines. What is remarkable is not the number of lines, but, as Schuller notes: "in the case of a seven-part ensemble, six of the seven lines may operate in different metric patterns... staggered in such a way that the downbeats of these patterns rarely coincide.” Grover Sales, Jazz: America’s Classical Music [New York, DaCapo, 1992, 9. 27]

Jaki Byard on Pops

"I felt he was the most 'natural' man - playing, talking, singing - he was so perfectly natural that tears came to my eyes. I was very moved to be near the most natural of musicians."

John Lewis on Papa Joe Jones

“You heard the time but it wasn’t a ponderous thing that dictated where the phrases would go. The band played the arrangements and the soloists were free because the time didn’t force them into any places they didn’t want to go.”

Gerry Mulligan on Jack Teagarden

"He had everything a great Jazz musician needs to have: a beautiful sound, a wonderful melodic sense, a deep feeling, a swinging beat and the ability to make everything - even the most difficult things - sound relaxed and easy."

Louie Bellson: Drummer Extraordinaire

[Lester Young to Louie Bellson] ""Lady Bellson, just play titty-boom, titty-boom, and don't drop no bombs!"

Playboy Magazine Cartoon

Artie Shaw on Louis Armstrong As Told to Gene Lees

Artie said, "You are too young to know the impact Louis had in the 1920s," he said. "By the time you were old enough to appreciate Louis, you had been hearing those who derived from him. You cannot imagine how radical he was to all of us. Revolutionary. He defined not only how you play a trumpet solo but how you play a solo on any instrument. Had Louis Armstrong never lived, I suppose there would be a jazz, but it would be very different."

Pops

"You really can't play anything that Louis hasn't played, I mean, even modern." Miles Davis